AFTER trying to find any number of ways to avoid stating what is obvious to everybody about the utterances being evacuated from the mouths of the IPPG at the last Council. Badger decided to have a lie down with a good book and bask In some of the recent good weather. Badger. who is not a creature fond of taking risks. decided to leave his choke of reading material to chance and – with his head turned away -reached into his groaning bookshelves to pull out what he sincerely hoped would he a plum. After picking out Fifty Shades of Beige: the Bryn Parry Jones Story and Jamie Adams’ Bumper Book of Fun with Sums, Badger decided that dumb chance was just that and, with his eyes a-peeping through his paws. Badger reached into the more interesting section of his bookshelf. Imagine his pleasure when he pulled out a battered and weil-thumbed copy of Pembrokeshire Humour by Brian John.

Badger flicked through his volume, chortling away. when one story in particular gave him pause for thought. Summarising a joke is rather difficult, but Badger will have a go A restaurant in Tenby was famed for its rabbit pie. During the myxomatosis scourge, the quality of the pie declined until one customer asked the restaurateur: “Give us an honest answer an you using horse-meat in the pie mixture?’ Answering yes. the restaurateur explained that he was using half and half. “What?” the startled customer asked poking at his rapidly cooling pie. “filly-fifty?’ Replied the restaurateur “That’s right. One horse to one rabbit.” Nowadays, of Mane. such a restaurateur would he hauled off before the beaks for any number of heinous crimes against food hygiene and trading standards.

It is the passing off as one thing as another that exercises Badger. however. When Badger lifts up the crust of an Old Ratty’s Hedgehog and Gravy pie, he expects to find rich wont’ and weasel gravy seething around large chunks of prime hedgehog. Anything else would be just wrong. That is a basic consideration. Badger likes things that – as the advertising slogan goes – do what they say on the tin. Badger loves books. but he would be appalled to open a volume marked “de Bello Civili: Lucan” to discover it was many Katie Price’s Love, Lks & Lipstick. So. when the County Council says that experiments with new gull-proof black hags in Tenby mean that they might be rolled out around Pembrokeshire you have to look al it and think -good news”, But when one peels back the crust of this story, there is more hobbling underneath than you might expect. Pembrokeshire is a coastal county. There cannot be a settlement that is more than twenty minutes from the sea, Pembrokeshire has lots and lots of sea birds. Lots and lots of those sea birds are gulls. At which point in the year since Pembrokeshire adopted this benighted box-ticking green policy on our behalf did the Council think gull-proof bags might be a good idea? No poop.

Mr Holmes! Since the Council decided upon its policy of collecting black bin hags from louses in Nmbrokeshite, the number of households taking reeking rubbish to the tip has increased. Badger has visited a few tips in the last year and traffic has steadily increased. All the council has done is force people who do 1104 have an airtight outbuilding in which to store rotting garbage to transport the stuff themselves. In addition, and Badger speaks from experience. vermin intrude into garages. sheds and even into homes to pull bin bags apart and get at their contents. The Council has simply shuffled the problem elsewhere and shuffled the money round in inventive ways to get away with it. Bins would he answer. Most councils provide them fur black bag waste. Pembrokeshire doesn’t.

And when one lifts up the  crust of the gull-proof bags story, it is not difficult to find out why that is the CMG. The Council claims: “Research has shown that the quantity of waste collected from households with % wheelie bins is significantly higher than households that use sacks only.” When the County Council introduced garden waste bins to replace green sacks. Tenby ‘s Town Council was most miffed at the thought of residents in the town’s narrow and hustling streets having to haul a wheelie bin through their house instead of a sack of rubbish. In addition, it is thought that tourists – bless their sunburnt little white socks • don’t want to see wheelie bins in the street. It is better to present a romantic. twee and cod-genteel image of Pembrokeshire life to tourists. perhaps. than an accurate picture of living communities. Badger has been told at different nines that it was the National Park Authority or Tenby Town Council that put the kyhosh on thereat of us getting wheelie bins to keep our homes rat-free.

Badger offers no opinion on the truthfulness or otherwise of the allegations about Tenhy’s burghers or the Park’s enforcers. If true, however. it is monstrous that those of us who live in areas less adventitiously endowed with otherwise superfluous photogenic attributes. have to lump it as the Council will not provide us with bins and others with bags. Being members of the INC. most Cabinet members are used to being surrounded by rats and other vemiin. But members of Pembrokeshire’s public. those who receive public services provided by the Council, deserve better than walking into a garage to find a rat half way into a can of tuna while maggots happily wave hello from an empty bacon packet. If. like Badger. you are unlucky enough to have a member of the IPPG as your Councillor all one can expect when you complain is the equivalent of a pat on the head and a soothing word that we’re all in the same how.

A year on and a household with children. more than four people in it, or with a baby is lumped in the same boat as the singleton at home with a couple of moggies, the collected works of Polly Toynbce. and self-righteousness for company. That is not right. It is not fair. And the policy is wrung. But – and take a deep breath readers – it is not all the 113136’s fault. Badger realises that this might come as a surprise to some readers – and even some IPPG councillors – but Badger wants to point the finger at the real culprits. The Welsh Government is forcing councils to cut down on black bag collections because it is run by urban quangocrats who have little or no idea of life outside their little magic circle of self-congratulatory chums. And certainly little idea of life north and west of the M4 corridor. They have no idea what it is like to see a week’s rubbish strewn across the street by a hungry fox. In place of incentives, the Welsh Government is using a bloody big stick to beat Council’s unto doing what it wants. it is doing this because it does not believe in local communities’ ability to manage themselves and meet their own needs. It is part of the culture that wants to drag power away from local democracy and force people to do what it thinks is for their own good. Rather like the Tenby restaurateur’s reeking pie, it seems to Badger that the upper crust is well out of it.